you came right down to it, the rest he’d learned on his own, finding books, looking things up on the Internet. His foster parents had taken him in and assumed he was now one of the family and Dutch to boot. No need to delve into things like roots and backgrounds. That just made everyone uneasy. They had been very good to him in every other way, but as far as reminding him of who he was, they probably thought it was safer if he forgot, just like everyone else.
And if it hadn’t been for one old man who had moved to Holland from Ambria years before and lived near their summer home, he might have done just that.
“Too bad your parents didn’t tell you more,” he mused, comparing her experience to his and wondering why such different circumstances still ended up being treated the same way by the principals involved.
“They were busy with their jobs and raising two little girls, getting us to our dance practices and violin lessons and all that sort of thing.”
She moved restlessly. This was getting too close to the pain again. She hadn’t told him about her parents yet and she wasn’t sure she ever would. She knew she would never be able to get through it without breaking down, and she wanted to avoid that at all costs. Better to stick to the past.
“They were great parents,” she said, knowing she sounded a little defensive. “They just didn’t feel all that close to Ambria themselves, I guess.” She brightened. “But being Ambrian got me a grant for law school and even my job once I passed the bar.”
He remembered she’d mentioned something about that before but he hadn’t really been listening. Now he realized this could be a factor. “Your law firm is Ambrian?”
“Well, a lot of the associates are of Ambrian background. It’s not like we sit around speaking Ambrian or anything like that.”
This was all very interesting. The Ambrian connection was going to turn out to be more relevant than she knew—he was sure of it. His jaw tightened as he remembered that he still didn’t really know why she had shown up in his apartment or who had sent her.
But of course, there was a very possible explanation. She could, even unwittingly, be a stalking horse for a real assassin. Or she could merely be the one testing the territory for someone who meant to come in and make sure David never reached the strength to threaten the current Ambrian regime. It was hard to know and he was more and more convinced that she didn’t know anything more than what she’d told him.
He remembered what she’d said about not knowing which side her parents had been on. Since she had no emotional identification with either side, she was pretty much an innocent in all this. If she was here because an enemy of his had sent her, she wasn’t likely to be aware of it.
Still, he shouldn’t have brought her along. It was a stupid, amateur thing to do. He should probably find a way to park her somewhere—if it wasn’t already too late.
Because he couldn’t keep her with him. He was due in Italy by the end of the week for the annual meeting of the Ambrian expatriate community. This would be the first time he’d ever attended. It was to be a gathering of the clan, a coming together of a lot of Ambrians who had been powers, or were related to those who had been, in the old days. He needed to be focused on the future of Ambria, not on Ayme and Cici. He couldn’t take them along.
So—what to do with them in the meantime?
He’d promised he would help Ayme find Cici’s father and he meant to keep that promise. It was bound to get a bit complicated, seeing as how his name had come into the picture, and he didn’t have much time. But he had a few contacts. He would do what he could to help.
The only thing he could think of was Marjan, his adoptive sister who was married with two children and lived in a farming town in a northern area of Holland. It was a good, out of the way place where they could melt into the scenery. Maybe even he could slip in below the radar there.
It was odd how quickly he seemed to have slipped into the cloak-and-dagger mold. But then, he supposed he’d been training for it ever since he left Ambria, in attitude if not in action. It was true that he’d never felt he could fully open himself to others in his life. He always had to hide, not only his real identity, but also his feelings about things.
“So I guess you could say,” he said, going on with their conversation, “bottom line, that you don’t really care about who runs Ambria?”
“Care?” She looked at him blankly. “I’ve never given it a second thought.”
“Of course not.”
He turned away, feeling a surge of bitterness in his chest. Was it only he and his brother who still cared? If so, they were going to have a hard time rallying others to their cause. But it was hardly fair to lay this complaint on her. She couldn’t help it that no one had bothered to educate her about her background.
And if he were honest with himself, he would have to admit that the strength of his own feelings had been greatly enhanced by his relationship with his brother. Before he knew Monte, his interest in Ambria was strong, even passionate, but diffused. It had taken an intensive experience with his brother to bring out the nuances.
It had been exciting and a fulfillment of a lifelong dream to find Monte the way he did. But it had been very difficult for the two of them to have any sort of relationship. They couldn’t trust most forms of communication, they couldn’t appear together anywhere because of how much alike they looked, they had to be aware of the possibility that someone was listening every time they spoke to each other. So Monte finally hit upon the perfect scheme—a six-week sailing trip in the South Pacific.
They met in Bali and proceeded from there, getting to know each other and hashing out the possibilities of being royals without a country to call their own. They had huge arguments, even huger reconciliations, they shared ideas, hopes and dreams and emotions, and they ended up as close as any two brothers could be. By the time the six weeks was up, they had both become impassioned with the goal of taking their country back, somehow, someday. To that end, they quickly become co-conspirators and developed a plan.
They decided to continue to go under their aliases. That was necessary for survival. Monte would travel in international circles he already had access to and try to gain information—and eventually supporters—and David would go undercover in the social jet-setting world he knew so well to glean what he could from business contacts on one side and the inebriated rich drones he partied with on the other. Their primary goal was to find their lost brothers and sisters and begin to work toward a restoration of their monarchy.
So he had a very large advantage over Ayme. He certainly couldn’t expect her to share his goals when she’d never even heard of most of them and wouldn’t know what to do with them if she had.
Their conversation had faded away by now and she spent some time watching the countryside roll past. Morning had come and gone and afternoon was sending long shadows across the land. The countryside was much more interesting now with its checkerboard fields and beautiful green hedgerows and the quaint little towns. This was more like the England she’d expected to see.
But the unanswered questions still haunted this trip as far as she was concerned. Where were they going? And why?
They stopped for petrol and David noticed a park nearby.
“Want to get out and stretch your legs?” he suggested as he maneuvered the car into the little parking lot next to a large tree. “I need to make a phone call.”
They
